Premier facing an uphill climb

Burlington Post

Ontario’s new premier, Kathleen Wynne, faces a number of challenges.

First, how to tame Ontario’s growing annual deficit spending, which threatens to bust out from being really bad to almost epic in proportion? Given huge tax increases by her predecessor Dalton McGuinty, the ability to increase taxes to reduce annual borrowing is gone, so the Wynne government must cut programs.

The question is which ones and how?

Former banker Charles Sousa is the new minister of finance. Mr. Sousa has the advantage that it is likely not possible to put in a worse performance than his predecessor Dwight Duncan. However, he has to work with the mess that Mr. Duncan left — no history of balanced budgets, burgeoning deficits, a near doubling of total debt, an inability to say no to the public service, and a history of solving problems with money.

Ms. Wynne’s second challenge is trying to extract the Ontario Liberals from the huge power plant scandal. After a now former Liberal cabinet minister told the legislature that the decision to cancel the partly-completed Mississauga power plant project in the middle of an election campaign was made by Liberal Party strategists, the table was set. Public money was spent to cancel the contracts. When money is spent in the interest of a political party rather than by government officials in the public interest, legal precedent suggests the party is responsible for those costs. Those costs have been estimated at perhaps more than $1 billion. Repaying them would bankrupt the Ontario Liberal Party.

Ms. Wynne, who was Liberal Party campaign co-chair, has to find a way past this predicament but also one that will satisfy demands of the opposition to know the actual costs of failing to fulfill the contract in Mississauga and another power plant project cancelled a year earlier in Oakville.

She then has to restore public trust even as more revelations of malfeasance surface in the ORNGE air ambulance scandal.

It is evident that Ms. Wynne, formerly head of the Toronto Public School Board, will try to mend fences with Ontario teachers. She has made Liz Sandals, former president of the Ontario Public School Boards Association, the new minister of education.

In the end it appears that the new left-of-centre premier will attempt to woo the left-of-centre Ontario NDP to avoid an election. There are many requirements for Ms. Wynne’s government to survive — deft handling of several toxic files and the healing power of time — and even that may not be enough.

Ted Chudleigh is the Conservative MPP representing the provincial riding of Halton.